Dr. Michael Ormsbee: Food Timing, Nutrition & Supplements for Fat Loss, Muscle Growth & Recovery

**Andy Galpin** (0:00)
The science and practice of enhancing human performance for sport, play and life. Welcome to Perform. I'm Dr. Andy Galpin. I'm a professor and scientist and the executive director of the Human Performance Center at Parker University. Today, I'm going to be talking with my longtime friend, Dr. Mike Ormsbee. Mike is a professor at Florida State University. He is the director of the Institute of Sports Science and Medicine. Mike is a world-renowned expert in all things exercise physiology, supplementation, sports nutrition, and a whole host of other important and interesting topics that we'll get into in today's conversation. Mike has done a tremendous amount of work over the last 15 years, specifically in the area of pre-sleep nutrition. And I can promise you, we're going to get into some things that are Mike's lifelong passion and career that are counterintuitive to what most people think about what to eat and what not to eat prior to sleep. In fact, I'll give you a little bit of a spoiler alert. He has some pretty compelling evidence over multiple studies at eating specific items in specific amounts prior to sleep is advantageous for not only sleep and recovery, but multiple other things as well. The conversation was wide-ranging, but we'll cover many other things like a handful of supplements that people have not heard of that have interesting implications for a wide variety of performance and health-related outcomes. It was a fascinating conversation. I learned a lot from it. I've known Mike for a long time. I've known his work for a long time, but there was a lot that I did not know about the work he's done and will be doing in the future. Here we go with Dr. Mike Ormsbee. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did. Dr. Mike Ormsbee, thank you so much for coming out. I know it was a long trip this morning and I have a bunch of stuff I'm excited to talk to you about. But first, thank you so much for coming out.

**Michael Ormsbee** (1:51)
You're welcome. I've not been able to come over here and do some podcasting and hang out on this side of the country for a while. So for me, it's a pleasure. I appreciate the offer.

**Andy Galpin** (2:00)
I love your research. I love a lot of the stuff that you've gotten into. So when we decided to officially have guests for Perform, I was like, Mike, Mike has got to be on the list and stoked to have you out here.

**Michael Ormsbee** (2:10)
Appreciate it. I can't wait to get into some of this stuff because I love it. It's what I do day in and day out. And speaking to a bigger audience is a pleasure.

**Andy Galpin** (2:19)
Fantastic, man. We're going to go to a lot of areas, but where I want to start is actually with ultra endurance stuff. Sure. So you yourself, I know you played hockey and probably plenty of other sports, but then you not only have competed in various forms of ultras and then you've done a lot of research in that. So tell me how you got into that background and then very specifically, some of the studies you've done in the athletes you work with.

**Michael Ormsbee** (2:43)
So yeah, I played college ice hockey through my junior year at Skidmore College in upstate New York. Then I went to grad school in South Dakota and coached the Peewee Bee State Champs out there, which was a great opportunity to coach. So I was like my dip into that a little bit. Then coming back to go to more graduate school, I ended up being at ECU and I saw an email come across and it said, anyone ever play hockey before? I'm like, well, I used to play a lot of hockey.
So I remember emailing the coach and just saying, hey, I'm here. I'm in my PhD program, so I don't know how much I can contribute. Can I come out? And it's like, yep, you got to be on the team. So that was a lot of fun. They dropped me off to study all day, pick me up to play a 11 p.m. game. And that was a great season. That was the end of my eligibility. I ended up playing two more or coaching two more years at ECU. But I finished and was like, there's this void with being competitive. And that came out for me in triathlon, of all things. And I kind of got into it because of my master's advisor. I showed up for an interview basically in South Dakota, and he put me on a bike. I'd never ridden a bike more than three miles. And we went for like a 20 mile, which doesn't sound all that long now, but it was excruciating. Yeah. I'm out here trying to ride a bike and keep up. And I thought, if he can leave work and go ride his bike, then I better learn how to ride a bike so that I can go do it with him or get out of here and go train a little bit. So that got me into cycling. And then one thing led to another. And I was training for short distance. And then my wife and I sort of got into some of the middle distance triathlon and ended up finishing. My longest were like these 70.3 half Ironman events. And so that was it. I loved the training. I just I loved setting it up, figuring out what I need to do to meet all the different goals and demands I had in terms of increasing VO2 max, or being able to push thresholds, or what kind of pacing that I want to pull. And then nutrition played a gigantic role in triathlon, which I was obviously in a nutrition. And it's often considered the fourth aspect of triathlon.